Icaromenippus
Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)Icar 30 · perseus-eng2More by Lucian of Samosata (lucian-of-samosata)
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MENIPPUS It was three thousand furlongs, then, from the earth to the moon, my first stage; and from there up to the sun perhaps five hundred leagues; and from the sun to Heaven itself and the citadel of Zeus would be also a day’s ascent for an eagle travelling light. FRIEND In the name of the Liberal Arts, Menippus, why are you playing astronomer and surveyor on the quiet like that? For a long time I have been following you about and listening to your outlandish talk about suns and moons and even those outworn topics, stages and leagues. MENIPPUS Don’t be surprised, my friend, if my talk seems to you to be.up in the air and flighty; I am just figuring up the total length of my recent journey. FRIEND So you did like the Phoenicians, old chap, and guessed your way by the stars ¢ MENIPPUS No indeed, I made my journey right among the stars, FRIEND Great Heracles! That's a long dream you are talking of, if you actually lost yourself and slept for leagues and leagues!
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MENIPPUS Dream, man! Do you think I’m telling you a dream? [am just back from a visit to Zeus. FRIEND What’s that you say? Menippus here from Heaven, dropt from the clouds? MENIPPUS Here I an, I tell you, just come back to-day from the very presence of your great Zeus himself, and I have seen and heard wonderful things. If you don’t believe me, I am overjoyed precisely because my good luck is beyond belief, FRIEND Why, my divine Menippus, my Olympian Menippus, how can a mortal groundling like myself disbelieve a sky-man—in fact, to use the words of Homer, a son of Heaven?Iliad 5, 373; 898. But tell ine, please, how you were carried aloft, and where you got so long a ladder; for as far as looks go you are too little like the lad of Phrygia for us to suppose that, like hii, you were snatched up by the eagle to become a cupbearer.The reference is to the story of Ganymede. MENIPPUS You have clearly been making fun of me this long time, and it is no wonder you think that my strange story is like a fairy-tale. However, I had no need of your ladder; for my ascent, nor yet to become the eagle’s pet, for I had wings of my own. FRIEND You have improved on Daedalus, by what you say, if over and above all else, you have turned from a man to a hawk or a crow without our knowing it. MENIPPUS Your guess is well-aimed, my friend, and hits the bull’s-eye; for I myself constructed wings, patterned after Daedalus’ clever invention.
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FRIEND Of all the foolhardy men in the world! Then you weren’t afraid you would fall into the water somewhere and give us a Menippean Sea named after yourself, to match the Icarian? MENIPPUS Not at all; Icarus had his feathers fitted on with wax, and so just as soon as that melted in the sun he shed his plumage, of course, and fell down; but my wings were innocent of wax. FRIEND What do you mean? For by now, sofhehow or other, you are gradually inclining me to believe in the truth of your story. MENIPPUS This is what I mean; taking a good large eagle and also a strong vulture and cutting off their wings, joints and all—but I'll tell you the whole scheme from first to last, if you have time. FRIEND By all means; here I am in suspense, thanks to what you have said, and already waiting with open mouth for the end of your tale. In the name of Friendship, don’t leave me hanging by the ears somewhere in the midst of the story.
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MENIPPUS
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Listen then, for a friend left in the lurch with his mouth open would be anything but a pretty spectacle, especially if he were hanging by the ears, as you say you are. As soon as I began to find, in the course of my investigation of life, that all objects of human endeavour are ridiculous and trivial and insecure (wealth, I mean, and office and sovereign power), contemning those things and assuming that the effort to get them was an obstacle to getting things truly worth effort, I undertook to lift my eyes and contemplate the universe. In so doing I was caused great perplexity, first of all by what the philosophers call the Cosmos, for I could not discover how it came into being or who made it, or its source or purpose. Then in examining it part by part I was compelled to rack my brains still more, for I saw the stars scattered hap-hazard about the sky, and I wanted to know what the sun itself could be. Above all, the peculiarities of the moon seemed to me extraordinary and completely paradoxical, and I conjectured that her multiplicity of shapes had some hidden reason. More than that, lightning flashing and thunder crashing and rain or snow or hail driving down were all hard to interpret and impossible to reason out.
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MENIPPUS Being in that state of mind, I thought it best to learn about all these points from the philosophers, for I supposed that they surely would be able to tell the whole truth.” So I picked out the best of them, as far as I could judge from their dourness of visage, paleness of complexion and length of beard; and as the gentlemen at once struck me as being extremely tall talkers and high thinkers, I put myself i in their hands, paying down part of a good round sum on the spot and contracting to pay the balance later, on completion of my course in philosophy; and then I expected to be taught how to hold forth on the Heavens and to learn the system of the universe. But they were so far from ridding me of my old-time ignorance that they plunged me forthwith into even greater perplexities by flooding me every day with first causes, final causes, atoms, voids, elements, concepts, and all that sort of thing. But the hardest part of it all, in my opinion at least, was that although no one of them agreed with anyone else in anything he said, but all their statements were contradictory and inconsistent, they nevertheless expected to persuade me and each tried to win me over to his own doctrine. FRIEND Extraordinary that learned men quarrelled with each other about their doctrines and did not hold the same views about the same things!
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MENIPPUS
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Indeed, my friend, it will make you laugh to hear about the way they bragged and worked wonders in their talk! Why, in the first place, they-stood on the ground and were not a bit better than the rest of us who walk the earth; in fact, they were not even sharper sighted than their neighbours, but some of them were actually purblind through age or idleness. In spite of that, however, they claimed to discern the boundaries of Heaven, they measured
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the sun, they visited the spheres beyond the moon, and you would have thought they had fallen from the stars from the way they told about their magnitudes and presumed to say just how many cubits it is in distance from the sun to the moon, often, perhaps, without even knowing how many furlongs it is from Megara to Athens. And not only did they measure the height of the air and the depth of the sea and the circumference of the earth, but by the description of circles and the construction of triangles on squares and of imultiple spheres they actually measured out the cubic content of the Heavens.
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MENIPPUS
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Moreover, was it not silly and completely absurd that when they were talking about things so uncertain they did not make a single assertion hypothetically but were vehement in their insistence and gave the rest no chance to outdo them in exaggeration; all but swearing that the sun is a mass of molten metal, that the moon is inhabited, and that the stars drink water, the sun drawing up the moisture from the sea with a rope and bucket, as it were, and distributing the beverage to all of them in order?
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MENIPPUS As for the contradictory nature of their theories, that is easy to appreciate. Just see for yourself, in Heaven’s name, whether their doctrines are akin and not widely divergent. First of all, there is their difference of opinion about the universe. Some think it is without beginning and without end, but others have even ventured to tell who made it and how it was constructed; and these latter surprised me most, for they made some god or other the creator of the universe, but did not tell where he came from or where he stood when he created it all; and yet it is impossible to conceive of time and space before the genesis of the universe. FRIEND They are very presumptuous charlatans by what you say, Menippus. MENIPPUS But my dear man, what if I should tell you all they said about “ideas” and incorporeal entities, or their theories about the finite and the infinite? On the latter point also they had a childish dispute, some of them setting a limit to the universe and others considering it to be unlimited; nay more, they asserted that there are many worlds and censured those who talked as if there were but one. Another, not a man of peace, opined that war was the father of the universe.Heraclitus. The lack of connection between this sentence and the foregoing leads me to suspect that we have lost a ortion of the Greek text containing a reference to the theories of the other Ionians.
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MENIPPUS
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As for the gods, why speak of them at all, seeing that to some a number was god, while others swore by geese and dogs and plane-trees?
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Moreover, some banished all the rest of the gods and assigned the governance of the universe to one only, so that it made me a little disgusted to hear that gods were so scarce. Others, however, lavishly declared them
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to be many and drew a distinction between them, calling one a first god and ascribing to others second and third rank in divinity. Furthermore, some thought that the godhead was without form and substance, while others defined it as body. Then too they did not all think that the gods exercise providence in our affairs; there were some who relieved them of every bit of responsibility as we are accustomed to relieve old men of public duties; indeed, the part that they give them to play is just like that of supers in comedy. A few went beyond all this and did not even believe that there were any gods at all, but left the world to wag on unruled and ungoverned.
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MENIPPUS
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When I heard all this, the result was that I did not venture to disbelieve “high-thundering” gentlemen with goodly beards, and yet did not know where to turn in order to find a point of doctrine that was unassailable and not in any way subject to refutation by someone else. So I went through just what Homer speaks of; again and again I was fain to believe one of them,
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“but other counsel drew me back.
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Od. 9, 302.
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At my wit’s end in view of all this, I despaired of hearing any truth about these matters on earth and thought that the only way out of my whole dilemma would be to get wings somehow and go up to Heaven. The wish was father to the thought, of course, but the story-teller Aesop had something to do with it also, for he makes Heaven accessible to eagles and beetles and now and then even to camels.
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Well, that I myself could ever grow wings was not in any way possible, I thought; butif L put on the wings of a vulture or an eagle (for no others would be large enough to uphold the weight of a man’s body), perhaps my attempt would succeed. So catching my birds, I carefully cut of the right wing of the eagle and the left wing of the vulture, tied them tightly together, fitted them to my shoulders with stout straps and made grips for my hands at the ends of the primary feathers. Then I first tried myself by jumping up and down, working my arms and doing as geese do—lifting myself along the ground and running on tiptoe as I flew. When the thing began to work well for me, I went in for the experiment with greater boldness. Going up to the acropolis, I let myself drop down the cliff right into the theatre.
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MENIPPUS Since I flew down without mischance, I began to aspire high and used to take wing from Parnes or Hymettus, flying to Geraneia and from there up to Acrocorinthus and then over Pholoe and Erymanthus clear to Taygetus. Now that I had thoroughly practised my experiment and had become an adept and a lofty soarer, I no longer had fledgling aspirations but ascended Olympus, provisioned myself as lightly as I could and this time made straight for Heaven. At first I was dizzied by the height, but afterwards I stood even that without discomfort. But when I had left the clouds far below and had got close to the moon, I felt myself getting tired, especially in the left wing, the vulture’s. Flying up, therefore, and perching on the moon, I rested myself, looking down on the earth from on high and like Homer’s Zeus,Iliad 13, 4. now observing the land of the horse-loving Thracians, now the land of the Mysians, and presently, if I liked, Greece, Persia and India; and from all this I got my fill of kaleidoscopic pleasure. FRIEND Then do tell me about it, Menippus, so that I may not miss a single detail of the trip, but may even know whatever you may have found out incidentally. I assure you, I am looking forward to hearing a good deal about the shape of the earth and about everything upon it as it looked to you, viewing it all from above. MENIPPUS You are right in your assumption, my friend, so mount up to the moon in fancy as best you can and share my trip and my view of the whole scheme of things on earth.
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MENIPPUS In the first place, imagine that the earth you see is very small, far less than the moon, [ mean; so that when I suddenly peered down I was long uncertain where the big mountains and the great sea were, and if I had not spied the Colossus of RhodesThe Colossus of Rhodes had been lying prostrate for several centuries at the time this dialogue was written. It stood upright for only 56 years (ca. 283-2278.¢.). Consequently the allusion is thought to come from Menippus. and the lighthouse on Pharos, I vow I shouldn’t have known the earth at all. But as it was, the fact that they were high and prominent and that the ocean glinted in the sun showed me that what I saw was the earth. But as soon as I had concentrated my gaze fixedly, the life of man in its entirety disclosed itself to me, and not only the nations and cities but the people themselves as clear as could be, the traders, the soldiers, the farmers, the litigants, the women, the animals and, in a word, all the life that the good green earth supports.A reminiscence of Homer; cf. Il. 2, 548; Od. 4, 229; 9, 357- 2 Od. 16, 187 FRIEND What you say is completely beyond belief and self-contradictory, for you told me just now that you had to look for the earth because it was diminished by the intervening distance, and that if the Colossus hadn’t given you your bearings, perhaps you would have thought you were looking at something else. How is it, then, that you have suddenly turned into a Lynceus and can make out everything on earth— the men, the animals and very nearly the nests of the mosquitoes?
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MENIPPUS
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Thanks for reminding me; somehow or other I neglected to say what I certainly should have said. When I recognised the earth by sight, but was unable to distinguish anything else on account of the height, because my vision did not carry so far, the thing annoyed me excessively and put me in a great quandary. I was downcast and almost in tears when the philosopher Empedocles came and stood behind me, looking like a cinder, as he was covered with ashes and all burned up. On catching sight of him I wasa bit startled, to tell the truth, and thought I beheld a lunar spirit; but he said “Don’t be alarmed, Menippus;
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No god am I: why liken me to them?
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Od. 16, 187.
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I am the natural philosopher Empedocles, at your service. You see, when I threw myself head-first into the crater, the smoke snatched me out of Aetna and brought me up here, and now I dwell in the moon, although I walk the air a great deal, and I live on dew. So I have come to get you out of your present quandary; for it annoys and torments you, I take it, that you cannot clearly see everything on earth.” “Thank you very much, Empedocles,” said I; “you are most kind, and as soon as I fly down to Greece again I will remember to pour you a drink-offering in the chimney
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and on the first: of every month to open my mouth at the moon three times and make a prayer.” “Great Endymion!” said he, “I didn’t come here for pay; my heart was touched a bit when I saw you sorrowful. Do you know what to do in order to become sharp-sighted?”
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MENIPPUS
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“No,” said I, “unless you are going to take the mist from my eyes somehow. At present my sight seems to be uncommonly blurred.” “Why,” said he, “you won’t need my services at all, for you yourself have brought the power of sharp sight with you from the earth.” “What is it, then, for I don’t know?” I said. “Don’t you know,” said he, “that you are wearing the right wing of an cagle?” “Of course,” said I, “but what is the connection between wings and eyes?” “This,” said he; “the eagle so far surpasses all the other creatures in strength of sight that he alone can look square at the sun, and the mark of the genuine royal cagle is that he can face its rays without winking an eye.” “So they say,” I
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replied, “and I am sorry now that when I came up here I did not take out my own eyes and put in those of the eagle. As things are, I have come in a_halffinished condition and with an equipment which is not fully royal; in fact, I am like the bastard, disowned eaglets they tell about.”
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“Why,” said he, “it is in your power this minute to have one eye royal, for if you choose to stand up a moment, hold the vulture’s wing still, and flap only the other one, you will become sharp-sighted in the right eye to match the wing; the other eye cannot possibly help being duller, as it is on the inferior side.” It will satisfy me,” said I, “if only the right one has the sight of an eagle; it would do just as well, for I am sure I have often seen carpenters getting on better with only one eye when they were trimming off timbers to the straight-edge.” This said, I set about doing as Empedocles advised, while he receded little by little and gradually dissolved into smoke.
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MENIPPUS
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No sooner had I flapped the wing than a great light broke upon me and all that was formerly invisible was revealed. Bending down toward earth, I clearly saw the cities, the people and all that they* were doing, not only abroad but at home, when they thought they were unobserved. I saw Ptolemy lying with his sister, Lysimachus’ son conspiring against his father, Seleucus’ son Antiochus flirting surreptitiously with his stepmother, Alexander of ‘Thessaly getting killed by his wife, Antigonus committing adultery with the wife of his son, and
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the son of Attalus pouring out the poison for him. In another quarter I saw Arsaces killing the woman, the eunuch Arbaces drawing his sword on Arsaces, and Spatinus the Mede in the hands of the guards, being dragged out of the dining-room by the leg after having had his head broken with a golden cup.
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Similar things were to be seen going on in Libya and among the Thracians and Scythians in the palaces of kings—men committing adultery, murdering, conspiring, plundering, forswearing, fearing and falling victims to the treason of their closest kin.
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MENIPPUS Although the doings of the kings afforded me such rare amusement, those of the common people were far more ridiculous, for I could see them too— Hermodorus the Epicurean perjuring himself for a thousand drachmas, the Stoie Agathocles going to law with his disciple about a fee, the orator Clinias stealing a cup out of the Temple of Asclepius and the Cynic Herophilus asleep in the brothel. Why mention the rest of them—the burglars, the bribe-takers, the money-lenders, the beggars? In brief, it was a motley and manifold spectacle. FRIEND Really, you might as well tell about that too, Menippus, for it scems to have given you unusual pleasure. MENIPPUS To tell it all from first to last, my friend, would be impossible in such a case, where even to see it all was hard work. However, the principal features were like what Homer says was on the shield.Iliad 18, 478 ff. In one place there were banquets and weddings, elsewhere there were sessions of court and assemblics; in a different direction a man was offering sacrifice, and close at hand another was mourning a death. Whenever I looked at the country of the Getae I saw them fighting; whenever I transferred my gaze to the Seythians, they could be seen roving about on their wagons: and when I turned my eyes aside slightly, I beheld the Egyptians working the land. The Phoenicians were on trading-ventures, the Cilicians were engaged in piracy, the Spartans were whipping themselves and the Athenians were attending court.
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MENIPPUS As all these things were going on at the same time, you can imagine what a hodge-podge it looked. It is as if one should put on the stage a company of singers, or I should say a number of companies, and then should order each singer to abandon harmony and sing a tune of his own; with cach one full of emulation and carrying his own tune and striving to outdo his neighbour in loudness of voice, what, in the name of Heaven, do you suppose the song would be like? FRIEND Utterly ridiculous, Menippus, and all confused. MENIPPUS Well, my friend, such is the part that all carth’s singers play, and such is the discord that makes up the life of men. Not only do they sing different tunes, but they are unlike in costume and move at cross-purposes in the dance and agree in nothing until the manager drives each of them off the stage, saying that he has no further use for him. After that, “however, they are all quiet alike, no longer singing that unrhythmical medley of theirs. But there in the play-house itself, full of variety and shifting spectacles, everything that took place was truly laughable.
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I was especially inclined to laugh at the people who quarrelled about boundary-lines, and at those who plumed themselves on working the plain of Sicyon or possessing the district of Oenoe in Marathon or owning a thousand acres in Acharnae. As a matter of fact, since the whole of Greece as it looked to me then from on high was no bigger than four fingers, on that scale surely Attica was infinitesimal. I thought, therefore, how little there was for our friends the rich to be proud of; for it seemed to me that the widest-acred of them all had but a single Epicurean atom under cultivation. And when I looked toward the Peloponnese and caught sight of Cynuria, I noted what a tiny region, no bigger in any way than an Egyptian bean, had caused so many Argives and Spartans to fall in a single day.
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Again, if T saw any man pluming himself on gold because he had eight rings and four cups, I laughed heartily at him too, for the whole of Pangacum, mines and all, was the size of a grain of millet.
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FRIEND You lucky Menippus, what a surprising spectacle! But the cities and the men—for Heaven’s sake, how did they look from on high? MENIPPUS I suppose you have often seen a swarm of ants, in which some are huddling together about the mouth of the hole and transacting affairs of state in public, some are going out and others are coming back again to the city; one is carrying out the dung, and another has caught up the skin of a bean or half a grain of wheat somewhere and is running off with it; and no doubt there are among them, in due proportion to the habits of ants, builders, politicians, aldermen, musicians, and philosophers. But however that may be, the cities with their population resembled nothing so much as ant-hills. If you think it is belittling to compare men with the institutions of ants, look up the ancient fables of the Thessalians and you will find that the Myrmidons, the most warlike of races, turned from ants into men. Well, when I had looked and laughed at everything to my heart’s content, I shook myself and flew upward, Unto the palace of Zeus, to the home of the other immortals. Iliad1, 222.
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MENIPPUS
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Before I had gone a furlong upward, the moon spoke with a voice like a woman’s and said: “Menippus, Pll thank you kindly to do me a service with Zeus.” "Tell me what it is,’ said I, “it will be no trouble at all, unless you want me to carry something.” "Take a simple message and a request from me to Zeus. I am tired at last, Menippus, of hearing quantities of dreadful abuse from the philosophers, who have nothing else to do but to bother about me, what I am, how big I am, and why I become semicircular, or crescent-shaped. Some of them say I am inhabited, others that I hang over the sea like a mirror, and others ascribe to me—oh, anything that each man’s fancy prompts. Lately they even say that my very light is stolen and illegitimate, coming from the sun up above, and they never weary of wanting to entangle and embroil me with him, although he is my brother; for they were not satisfied with saying that Helius himself was a stone, and a glowing mass of molten metal.
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MENIPPUS
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“But am I not aware of all the shameful, abominable deeds they do at night, they who by day are dour-visaged, resolute of cye, majestic of mien and the cynosure of the general public? Yet although I see all this, I keep quiet about it, for I do not think it decent to expose and illumine those nocturnal pastimes of theirs and their life behind the scenes. On the contrary, if I see one of them committing adultery or thieving or making bold to do anything else that best befits the night, I draw my garment of cloud together and _ veil my face at once, in order that I may not let the common people see old men bringing discredit on their long beards and on virtue. But they for their part never desist from picking me to pieces in talk and _ insulting me in every way, so that I vow by Night, I have often thought of moving as far away as possible to a place where I might escape their meddling tongues. "So be sure to report all this to Zeus and to add, too, that I cannot remain in my place unless he destroys the .natural philosophers, muzzles the logicians, razes the Porch, burns down the Academy, and stops the lectures in the Walks; for only then can I get a rest and cease to be surveyed by them every day.”
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MENIPPUS
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“Very well,” said I, and therewith I pressed on upwards along the road to Heaven,
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‘Whence there was naught to be seen of the labours of men or of oxen;
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Od. 10, 98.
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for in a little while even the moon seemed small to me, and the earth had at last disappeared from my view. Taking the sun on my right and flying past the stars, on the third day out I drew near to Heaven. At first I made up my mind to go straight in without more ado, for I thought I should easily escape observation, as I was half eagle and I knew that the eagle was on intimate terms with Zeus from of old; but afterwards I concluded that they would very soon find me out because the other wing that I wore was a vulture’s. Thinking it best, anyhow, not to take any unnecessary chances, I went up and knocked at the door. Hermes answered my knock, inquired my name, and went off in haste to tell Zeus. In a little while I was admitted in great fear and trembling, and found them all sitting together, not without apprehension themselves; for my visit, being so unprecedented, had put them in a quiet flutter, and they almost expected the whole human race to arrive at any moment, provided with wings like maine.
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MENIPPUS
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Zeus, however, looked at me with a
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fierce, Titanic stare and said in a very terrible voice:
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What is your name, sir, whence do you come, and where is your city and hearth-stone?
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The line occurs frequently in the Odyssey, e.g. 1, 170.
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When I heard this, I nearly dropped dead of fright, but stood my ground all the same, though my jaw was hanging and I was thunderstruck by the loudness of his voice. But in time I pulled myself together and told him the whole story clearly, starting at the very beginning—how I wanted to learn about the heavenly bodies, how I went to the philosophers, how I heard them contradicting each other, how I got tired of being pulled this way and that by their arguments, and then about my idea and the wings and all the rest of it till my arrival in Heaven; and at the end I added the message of the moon. Smiling and unbending a little, Zeus remarked: “What can one say to Otus and Ephialtes when even a Menippus has the hardihood to come up to Heaven? However, we invite you to be our guest for to-day, and to-morrow, after we have taken action on the matters about which you have come, we shall send you away.” With that he arose and walked toward the best place in Heaven for hearing, as it was time to sit and listen to the prayers.
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MENIPPUS As he walked along he asked me about things on earth, first the usual questions, how much wheat now costs in Greece, whether the last winter hit us hard and whether the crops needed more rain. Then he inquired whether any of the descendants of Phidias were still left, why the Athenians had omitted the Diasia for so many years, whether they had any idea of finishing the Olympieion for him and whether the men who robbed his temple in Dodona had been arrested.The temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens was completed by Hadrian a generation before these lines were written; and, if we may trust a casual reference to the Diasia in Plutarch (de tranquil, an. 20), that festival had been reinstituted in some form or other. Here again Lucian seems to be following Menippus. When I had answered these questions, he said: “Tell me, Menippus, what opinion do men hold about me? “Tell me, Menippus, what opinion do men hold about me?” “What opinion should they hold, sir,” said I, “except the highest possible one, that you are king of all the gods?” “You are fond of your joke,” said he, “but I am thoroughly acquainted with their craze for novelty even without your telling me. There was once a time when they looked upon me as a prophet and a healer, and I was all in all; “Yea, full of Zeus were all the streets And all the marts of men.’ At that time Dodona and Pisa were rich and highly regarded by all, and I could not even see for the smoke of the sacrifices. But since Apollo founded his oracle at Delphi and Asclepius his hospital in Pergamos and the temple of Bendis arose in Thrace and the temple of Anubis in Egypt and the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, these are the places where they all run and celebrate feast-days and bring hecatombs, and offer up ingots of gold, while I, they think, being past my prime, am sufficiently honoured if they sacrifice to me once every four whole years at Olympia. Consequently, you can see for yourself that my altars are more frigid than the Laws of Plato or the Syllogisms of Chrysippus.”
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Pursuing such topics, we came to the place where he had to sit and hear the prayers. There was a row of openings like mouths of wells, with covers on them, and beside each stood a golden throne. Sitting down by the first one, Zeus took off the cover and gave his attention to the people who were praying. The prayers came from all parts of the world and were of all sorts and kinds, for I myself bent over the orifice and listened to them along with him. They went like this; “O Zeus, may I succeed in becoming king!” “O Zeus, make my onions and my garlic grow!” “QO ye gods, let my father die quickly!”; and now and then one or another would say: “O that I may inherit my wife’s property!” “QO that I may be undetected in my plot against my brother!” “May I succeed in winning my suit!” “Let me win the wreath at the Olympic games!”” Among seafaring men, one was praying for the north wind to blow, another for the south wind; and the farmers were praying for rain while the washermen were praying for sunshine. Zeus listened and weighed each prayer carefully, but did not promise everything;
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This by the Father was granted and that was denied them.
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Iliad16, 250.
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You see, he let the just prayers come up through the orifice and then took them and filed them away at his right; but he sent the impious ones back un-
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granted, blowing them downward so that they might not even come near Heaven. In the case of one petition I observed that he was really in a dilemma: when two men made contrary prayers and promised equal sacrifices, he didn’t know which one of them to give assent to; so that he was in the same plight as the Academicians and could not make any aflirmation at all, but suspended judgement for a while and thought it over, like Pyrrho.
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MENIPPUS
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When he had given sufficient consideration to the prayers, he moved to the next throne and the second opening, leaned down and devoted himself to covenants and people making oaths. After considering these and annihilating Hermodorus the Epicurean, he changed his seat to the next throne to give his attention to omens derived from sounds and sayings and the flight of birds. Then he moved from there to the sacrifice-opening, through which the smoke came up and told Zeus the name of each man who was sacrificing. On leaving the openings, he gave orders to the winds and the weather, telling them what to do: “Let there be rain to-day in Scythia, lightning in Libya, snow in Greece. North Wind, blow in Lydia. South Wind, take a day off. Let the West Wind raise a storm on the Adriatic, and let about a thousand bushels of hail be sprinkled over Cappadocia.”
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MENIPPUS
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By this time he had pretty well settled everything, and we went away to the dining-hall, as it was time for dinner. Hermes took me in charge and gave me a place beside Pan and the Corybantes and Attis and Sabazius, those alien gods of doubtful status. Demeter gave me bread, Dionysus wine, Heracles
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meat, Aphrodite perfume and Poseidon sprats. But I also had surreptitious tastes of the ambrosia and the nectar, for Ganymede, bless his heart, had so much of human kindness about him that whenever he saw Zeus looking another way he would hastily pour me out a mouthful or two of the nectar. But as Homer says somewhere or other,
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1
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—having seen what was there, I suppose, just like me—the gods themselves neither cat bread nor drink ruddy wine but have ambrosia sect before them and get drunk on nectar; and they are especially fond of dining on the smoke from the sacrifices, which comes up to them all savoury, and on the blood of the victims that is shed about the altars when people sacrifice. During dinner - Apollo played the lute, Silenus danced the can-can and the Muses got up and sang us something from Hesiod’s Theogony and the first song in the Hymns of Pindar.
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2
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When we had had enough we composed ourselves for the night without any ceremony, being pretty well soused.
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MENIPPUS
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All the others, the gods and the warriors chariot-owning,
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Slept until morning, pus I was unbound by the fetters of slumber,
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Iliad2, 1-2.
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for I was thinking about many things, above all how Apollo had not grown a beard in all this while, and how it gets to be night in Heaven with Helius always there and sharing the feast. Well, as I say, I slept but little that night, and in the early morning Zeus got up and ordered procla-:
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mation for an assembly to be made.
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MENIPPUS When everybody was there, he began to speak: "The reason for calling you together is supplied, of course, by our visitor here of yesterday, but I have long wanted to confer with you about the philosophers, and so, being stirred to action by the moon in particular and the criticisms that she makes, I have decided not to put off the discussion any longer. “There is a class of men which made its appearance in the world not long ago, lazy, disputatious, vainglorious, quick-tempered, gluttonous, doltish, addle-pated, full of effrontery and to age the language of Homer, ‘a uscless load to the soil.Iliad 18, 1U4. Well, these people, dividing themselves into schol and inventing various word-mazes, have called themselves Stoics, Academics, Epicurcans, Peripatetics and other things much more laughable than these. Then, cloaking themselves i in the high- sounding name of Virtue, elevating their eyebrows, wrinkling up their foreheads and letting their beards grow long, they go about hiding loathsome habits under a false garb, very like actors in tragedy; for if you take away from the latter their masks and_ their gold-embroidered robes, nothing is left but a comical little creature hired for the show at seven drachmas.
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MENIPPUS
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“But although that is what they are, they look with scorn on all mankind and they tell absurd stories about the gods; collecting lads who are easy to hoodwink, they rant about their far-famed Virtue’ and teach them their insoluble fallacies; and in the presence of their disciples they always
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sing the praise of restraint and) temperance and self-suflicieney and spit at wealth and pleasure, but when they are all by themselves, how can one describe how much they cat, how much they indulge their passions and how they lick the filth off pennies? “Worst of all, though they themselves do no goéd either in public or in private life but are uscless and superfluous,
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Neither in war nor in council of any account,
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Iliad2, 202.
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nevertheless they accuse everyone clse; they amass biting phrases and school themselves in novel terms of abuse, and then they censure and reproach their fellow-men; and whoever of them is the most noisy and impudent and reckless in calling names is held to be the champion.
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MENIPPUS But if you were to ask the very man who is straining his lungs and bawling and accusing everybody else: ‘How about yourself? What do you really do, and what in Heaven’s name do you contribute’ to the world?’ he would say, if he were willing to say what was right and true: ¢1 hold it unnecessary to be a merchant or a farmer or a soldier or to follow'y trade; I shout, go dirty, take cold baths, walk abeut barefoot in winter, wear a filthy mantle and like Momus carp at everything the others do. If some rich man or other has made an extravagant outlay on a dinner or keeps a mistress, I make it my affair and get hot about it; but if one of my friends or associates is ill abed and needs relief and attendance, I ignore it.’ “That is what these whelps are like, gods.
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MENIPPUS Moreover, some of them who call themselves Epicureans are very insolent fellows indeed and attack us immoderately, saying not only that the gods do not direct human affairs, -but that they pay no attention at all to what goes on. So it is high time you were bethinking yourselves that if they ever are able to persuade the world, you will go uncommonly hungry; for who would continue to sacrifice to you if he expected to gain nothing by it? “As for what the moon finds fault with, you all heard the stranger tell about that yesterday. In view of all this, take such action as may be most advantageous to men and most salutary for ourselves.”
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MENIPPUS
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When Zeus had finished this speech the assembly fell into a commotion, and at once they all began to shout: “Blast them,” “Burn them,” “Annihilate them”; “To the pit,” “To Tartarus,” “To the Giants.’ Calling for silence once more, Zeus said: “It shall be as you will; they shall be annihilated, and their logic with them. However, just at present it is not in order to punish anyone, for it is the festival-season, as you know, during the next four months, and I have already sent about to announce the truce of God. Next year, therefore, at the opening of spring the wretches shall die a wretched death by the horrid thunderbolt.”
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So spake Cronus his son, and he bent black brows to confirm it!
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Iliad1, 528.
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MENIPPUS
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“As to Menippus here," he said, “this is my decision: after his wings have been taken away from him so that he may never come again, let him be carried down to earth to-day by Hermes.” With this he dismissed the meeting, whereupon Cyllenius (Hermes) picked me up by the right ear and took me down to the Potters’ Quarter yesterday evening. You have heard it all, my friend, all the news from Heaven. Now I am going off to carry the glad tidings to the philosophers who pace about in the Porch.